It’s Sunday, and I’m in a cheap motel in the middle of nowhere — Independence, California. I just spent all day yesterday off-roading the crap out of my 1991 Jeep Wrangler in the White Mountains/Eastern Sierras, and let me just say: My god was that place remote. We drove for 5 hours and never saw a single car on our trail. Anyway, in order to get here, I had to drop the Jeep’s fuel tank by myself, and let me just say: Don’t do that.
The Jeep Wrangler YJ’s fuel tank is held to the vehicle by its skid plate. Modern Wranglers are the same way — when you drop the skid plate, the fuel tank comes down with it. In the case of my old YJ, the gas tank is behind the axle, wedged between that axle at the front, the rear bumper at the rear, the driver’s side frame rail on the left, and the tailpipe on the right. It’s tight, and the fuel tank/skid plate assembly isn’t exactly lightweight, which is why this is a two-person repair job. I, unfortunately, was on my own.
I’ve spent the last 15 wrenching, often by myself, so I’ve gotten used to it; a combination of strong arms and the right tools means I’ve removed engines, dropped transmissions and transfer cases, and even pulled axles all by myself. These jobs would not be just twice as efficient with a second person; I’d say they’d be four or five times quicker with another set of hands. But alas, I only had two the other day while yanking the leaky YJ fuel tank, so I broke out my trusty transmission jack and got to work.
You can see the transmission jack there on the bottom right of the image above. I drove the Jeep up onto some ramps to give me a bit more space to work, then placed the jack under the tank, and started removing fasteners and hose connections. The fuel tank skid plate, to which the fuel tank is held via some straps, is held to the bottom of the front bumper via some bolts:
There are four other bolts holding the front of the tank to a frame crossmember, but that’s all that holds the tank in place. Of course, the fuel lines themselves need to be detached first, because otherwise dropping the tank will put those into tension.
To get the fuel filler hoses off, I had to remove the license plate bracket and filler surround:
I also unhooked the fuel lines from the tank going to the front of the Jeep. I took photos to make sure I remembered what went where:
With the tank unbolted and the hoses disconnected (along with the electrical connector for the fuel pump), I had to unhook an exhaust hanger to move the tailpipe a bit more outboard, then I had to use a pry bar and literally pry the tank out of the Jeep. It was rough — not that difficult, but just tedious.
I wheelbarrowed the tank to a spigot in the Galpin parking lot, hosed off some of the dirt, and then installed a new fuel pump, new vents, and new hoses:
Then I jacked the tank back up with the transmission jack, and pried it back into place.
Things went back together reasonably easily, but it just required me to lay on my back, strain only muscles I otherwise never use, and lose precious time that I needed for work. But alas, it is done, and the Jeep no longer leaks. And it got me to the Sierras without issue:
So, dear reader: What’s the most tedious repair job you’ve ever done? Was it some behind-the-dash heater core job? Maybe a wiring job? Perhaps a transmission valve body rebuild (you poor bastard)?
Changing the rad in a 1967 Mini. It is wedged longitudinally between the left side of the engine block and the left front inner fender. Almost none of the bolts is accessible except a few you can get at by tearing off the front grille. Hours and hours of cut knuckles.
Turbo replacement in a current generation cummins diesel Ram (the 6.7 they started using around ’09). Eventually the EGR cooler goes and dumps coolant into the turbo so at some point you’re either pulling the EGR (illegal) or replacing the turbo. It hangs off the passenger side of the engine in a spot that requires you to access it from under the hood, under the truck, and through the passenger wheel well. Once you go up, down, and sideways enough to get the thing free from attachment you then have to pull the bolt out of the engine mount on that side and jack the engine up several inches to get the clearance required to actually remove the turbo. Don’t jack you’re engine up too far though, the first thing that contacts the top of the firewall is a plastic coolant fitting that will immediately crack. Ask me how I know…
Coincidentally, the fuel tank on my wife’s YJ 🙁
It had a fuel leak, and I’ve dropped the tank alone at least 4 times trying to make it right, but the leak kept coming back. Turns out whoever owned it last used 1 size too large of fuel hose on the return line, and it would continually start spraying gas out around the hose clamp.
I was going to just replace the whole return line, but it runs between the body and the frame, and the body mount bolts are just balls of rust, so I just put 2 hose clamps on the line now, of 2 different clamp styles.
Interestingly after the 2nd drop of the tank, it also occurred to me that there were no tank straps, but there are supposed to be. Someone just never reinstalled them I guess, so only the rusted out skid plate was holding the tank in place. I assumed the tank must be shifting when hitting bumps and it might be causing it to pull on the fuel line and loosen it up, re-causing the fuel leak.
I got a replacement skid plate and tank straps, so on the 3rd drop of the tank, I put everything back together, and then found that the replacement skid plate was like 1″ too long front to back. Leading to the 4th drop of the tank. I ended up wrapping a couple ratchet-straps around the skidplate, tightening it as far as I could to try to bend the skid plate to the right shape. That got it about 1/2 way there, and I ended up making a metal bracket to cover the last 1/2″ between the bolt holes.
As of today, the culmination of my attempted fixes seems to be holding.
I might trust a free-range gas tank with me, but when it’s your wife, you’ve got to take that seriously. Ratchet straps are cheap.
Edit: didn’t read that last paragraph. Good for you.
I’ll go with replacing the blend door actuator on an F-150. For the second time in just over a year.
I’m lucky in that I only have one (apparently the higher trims can have up to four of these), and with the right tool it would probably be a piece of cake, but I have yet to figure out what the right tool is.
There are two small hex head screws, about an inch long and when seated, they sit about a third of an inch below the top of the actuator itself.
The front one (after you’ve pulled the radio out) is readily accessible and easy; the back one not so much. Unless you take a lot of the dash apart, you’ve got about an inch of clearance to reach over the actuator to loosen & tighten it.
From the front you can get about one click out of a small ratchet as you swing it back and forth, and it’s next to impossible to operate the rachet from behind without significant disassembly. (At the very least, you’ll want to take the glove box out, but even then you can barely get your hand back there.)
If you ever need to replace one of these, I’m told you should spring for the Motorcraft part. The lifespan of the aftermarket piece I put in was best measured in dozens of trips. Hopefully the new one lasts a lot longer, because I really don’t want to do that yet again.
Yikes. I’m a big fan of OEM parts for exactly things like that where I don’t ever want to do it again if possible.
I had pretty much the same blend door troubles in a ’97 Cougar. I struggled to replace it without removing the dash just for it to go out again. When the replacement went out I took the first one, fixed the little square that engages the blend door into place in a way where if I inserted it into the hole that moved the blend door and twisted it until the screws lined up it locked the blend door open. When summer arrived I’d remove the screws, locking the blend door shut. It had very high mileage and was on it’s 2nd transmission by the time the second actuator broke so I was fine with rigging it up.
Brilliant idea. The truck is 14 years old, but only has about 135 thousand miles on it. It’s my DD in the winter time, but I work from home so it doesn’t see much use outside of pulling the camper, hauling branches to the dump and runs to the home improvement store. If/when the new actuator dies, I’ll take your advice and keep it in place with only the front screw. That will greatly simplify the seasonal transitions.
Off the top of my head, replacing the power steering lines on my nephew’s Volvo 850. We were replacing the motor, and after looking at how crusty the hard lines that ran under the motor were, I decided to splurge for him. With the motor and transmission out, how hard could it be?
Ha! Without removing the rack to access things (which I really don’t think I needed) it was a total pain in the arse. The orientation of the fittings on the rack required crow’s feet wrenches I’ve never used before, let alone used. Every few degrees of turn required resetting the wrench and the extension and the ratchet, which more often than not involved dropping the crow’s foot under my creeper, and lots of swearing.
By far the hardest part of the entire engine replacement, which included me ending up in the ER because I ignored my back when it told me to stop, so it said, “Okay, now you get to crawl around the house for a few days.”
My two are leaking badly because I don’t want to do this
Exhaust and manifold on a ’64 Austin Healey 3000. The exhaust is under the intake (great design) and you can’t get to any fasteners so you have to remove the intake manifold and carbs also. Lots of under the car / over the car action and then aligning the exhaust all the way to the back requires many small adjustments and fiddling – the definition of tedious. Took me 3 days because I would get fed up after several hours of struggle.
I had a similar experience with the slant six in an old Dodge pickup. In that setup, the intake and exhaust manifolds are affixed to the head with one set of hardware; a bunch of nuts that tighten against these wedges that in turn press the manifolds against the head.
Long story short,by the time I got the manifolds off, I ended up also replacing the head because so many of the studs that those fasteners went on broke, and drilling and tapping the holes only ruined the threads in the head.
Front end on a 2005 Suburban. I had decided to go the whole nine yards and change/revision every movable part. The affair was so tedious that I laid the barge up for almost two years (it was during COVID, so it doesn’t count as that). When I finally gave myself a kick the whole thing came together rather beautifully and the bliss lasted even half a year before another squeak and another rattle surfaced.
The worst in the last decade was last weekend – rotors, pads, bleed brakes, coolant flush, cvt fluid on my 18 Honda Accord and 07 Subaru Tribeca. The Tribeca didn’t get new brakes as I did them last year. I hate rust and low cars. The amount of jacking and shifting and rejacking to get the Honda high enough in the air so I could get under it to remove the bloody plastic underpanels…. what idiot concluded that using aluminum fasteners screwed into steel riv nuts was a good idea. I’m getting too old, creaky and fat for this… had to break out torches to remove bleed screws, and disk rotor retaining screws (please tell me why these exist) … arrgggg. Anyway, it’s done, very satisfying to have completed the job.
‘Disc rotor retaining screws’ are in a special section in my personal lexicon titled Do Not Use In Polite Company. I was told they were for holding the disc while the vehicle went down the assembly line, so I got in the habit of filling the hole with anti-seize & tossing them in the glove compartment—ain’t had none fall off yet 🙂
-but they did prompt me to buy a decent impact driver, and that has proved its worth
Why is every impact driver I’ve seen slightly too short for my hands. I have to choose between hitting one side of my hand with a hammer, or chance getting the other side pinched when I hit the driver with a hammer.
My left thumb knuckle to this day still randomly pains me from such an incident. So I keep a variety of old vice grips in the it done got serious milk crate for those occasions when I gotta swing metal at something.
“the it done got serious milk crate”
Every garage ought to have one, LOL
I bought what was supposedly a good impact wrench (the kind you hit with a hammer) to get these screws off of an Acura Legend (great car). The wrench broke and I ended up using a dremel tool to cut out the screw. Left a little stub, and the car continued on great – which is a little surprising since I would have though a half ounce or so of weight getting removed would have caused an imbalance- I guess it was close enough to the spin center not to be a big deal.
I read the same thing about assembly line. The Honda is the first car I’ve encountered them on. The Subaru does not have them. I also purchased an impact driver. The driver, special atf/acetone juice, Mapp torch and patience did the job. If that hadn’t worked was ready to drill them out. The impact driver thankfully has a long enough shaft to save my hands from hammer blows. The first time I did the brakes on the Subaru I cursed out the Subaru technician that put the rear rotors on the car without assembly lube between the rotors and hubs. I spent hours banging away with increasingly larger hammers until I resorted to using a huge sledge hammer to knock them loose. I’ve done most of my own maintenance on the car since then.
Can’t count the number of these I have drilled out! Thanks for the laugh.
This is one of the underappreciated aspects of crossover: aging bellies fit under them the way they used to fit under sedans!
Do NOT ask me how I know, under any circumstances
That is one of the advantages. Working on losing a fractional ton of excess mass, but I’m still physically too large to slip under the Honda without it being up on jackstands.
I remember using my chest as a transmission stand when replacing the clutch on my 240z. Did it a few times over the years.
I used to fit under my old Ranger without even jacking it up. Good thing I’m getting rid of it; I won’t have to admit that I’m the wrong shape to fit anymore. (Still “in shape” on a technicality: round is a shape!)
You may want to check the springs on that ranger. Sounds like it’s sagging and getting closer to the ground!
It IS! I’m totally claiming that the fronts got bent like the backs did when I hauled a buddy’s Harley from Texas to Pennsylvania.
I installed airbag helpers rather than replacing the rear springs, because I had a tendency to *dramatically* overload it on occasion. How I only wrecked one rear wheel bearing in 260,000 miles is beyond me.
Power steering pump on a 20+ year old Suburban. Everything was corroded and/or seized. Absolute dumpster fire
Heater core and blower motor in a Chrysler Town & Country. Did it “the right way” the first time, and removed the entire dash. It took an entire three day weekend.
The second time I did it, I just cut an access panel under the dashboard. Looked janky, but I covered it with a bit of matching carpet and it’s not like you look up under there every day. Took about two hours.
Just finished replacing the front passenger side inner fender liner on my Scion xB.
Of course the battery for my Crapsman Impact is dead…And the cheap shit Amazon sent me did not fit well at all, (Insert tons of cussing here.) And since it’s been sitting in spare room for 13 months probably too late to return the cheap Chinese piece of shit…I ran over a school zone warning sign and wasted the factory part.
But it beat hitting a 3rd grader kid who does not know how sidewalks work.
Little fucker.
No just waiting to change the oil if I can find a filter and get stoned enough to face that task. Being broke sucks.
Waiting out the Indy 500 rain delay.
Remember our vets today, all of them. And be safe and kind.
Tedious as in not really difficult, but took for freaking ever? Clutch replacement in an NA Miata. Between the impossible to reach bellhousing bolts, and that damned “powerplant frame” backbone thingy, it took 12 hours. And that was borrowing a buddy’s garage with a lift. I can’t imagine even doing it with jackstands.
I am surprised! I have only replaced three clutches in my day (’77 Accord, ’94 Hilux, and an NA Miata), all three by myself, and I remember the Miata as being, well, not too bad. My only annoyance was the transmission itself rolled off my jack on its way down, which didn’t hurt anything but got a decent-size puddle of smelly gear oil on my driveway. Anyway, this was with jackstands and it took me an afternoon and was pretty straightforward, in part because the Miata is so wee and so nothing on it is all that heavy and ponderous. Maybe I just had the right assortment of ratchet extensions and U-joint adapters because I don’t remember the bellhousing bolts giving me any trouble. I would sooner do that again than, say, one of those behind-the-dash heater core replacements DT mentioned.
Well, part of the problem was that it was a 100 degree day. And I had to pull the flywheel to replace the rear main seal too.
That would definitely make a difference.
Jack? I helped a friend drop the transmission out of his miata, and didn’t even bother with a transmission jack. It’s the only time I’ve been able to bench press a transmission out and back in.
I didn’t have a transmission jack, just a regular hydraulic car jack from Kragen, which is why the transmission tipped off of it so easily. I was a scrawny dude at the time, and didn’t trust my upper body strength enough to try it without the jack. But yeah, had I tried it I probably wouldn’t have spilled the oil.
Helped my son replace the heater core on his NA Miata. Seemed like they hung the heater core on a wire at the start of the assembly line and built the car around it.
Repairing a rodent savaged wiring harness on a ‘69 Dodge Super Bee.
I know this pain too on a 69 Bee. But worth the effort. Still got yours? What engine, etc?
Mine is long gone, but I like to think some kid out there somewhere is still wrenching on it in his driveway.
I let it go when I went in the service. It was the base coupe, blue, with the 383 Magnum and Torqueflite auto trans., 3.23:1 axle, Sure Grip, rally wheels and tach with a clock inside the tach scale. Only automatic I ever owned in my life. Good car. Didn’t have the grunt of my ‘68 hemi Charger, but it was a more pleasant ride on the highway.
At the moment the driver’s door electric window in our 2003 Buick LeSabre. Because it’s GM getting the door panel off is a hassle, because it’s a modern car there’s a mini BCM in the door, and worst of all two weeks after I replaced the regulator the tracks started binding so I’m going into the door for the third time.
Pulling the ABS module was easier, just remove a wheel and splash shield and use a long Torx.
Replacing the fuel pump in my F150 was also a battle. Dropping the tank with a transmission jack was easy, disconnecting the never to be sufficiently damned Ford fuel line fittings was an epic battle that required a trip to Autozone for a aluminum disconnect tool because the Lisle plastic tool couldn’t generate enough force.
The 2003 is a nice looking car though, and it’s got one of my favorite engines (3800 V6) in it for a DD.
When they are working those early 2000s H bodies with the 3800 are great, it’s a shame they’re so hard to work on.
I feel yer pain, I went thru 7 of them across all four doors..and wait till you need to replace the rear bank O2 sensor ahead of the cat. You’ll need a trained gibbon to get to it.
And no, we don’t have it anymore.
Stuff like the regulators kept breaking on it, I put it in a consignment lot over the hill so I wouldn’t have to look the buyer in the eye, and darned if someone living on my side of the hill didn’t buy it…it just wouldn’t go away.
Loved that 3800 though.
Easy – a fuel pump on a 1977 Dodge Sportsman van. The book says 30 minutes, and all things being equal, a half-hour seems legit – jack up the front passenger side, remove front wheel, remove fuel lines, remove fuel pump, installation is reverse of removal. Easy peasy. So at 9am, with a new fuel pump I’d bought on the way home from work the day before, I jacked up the van. The old one came off easy. It was the last easy thing for the rest of the day.
I bolted in the new pump and went to reconnect the lines. The hard fuel line from the tank ran directly to the pump with no soft line in between, and a flared threaded fitting on the end that screwed into the intake side of the fuel pump. On the old pump, as seen from the side of the van looking straight in over the left front suspension, this hole was pointed about 30° toward the rear of the van. On the new pump, this hole was pointed about 30° toward the FRONT of the van.
Well, shit.
I called AutoZone and told them my problem. They had about six or seven of the same pump, or one for the same application. The intake on all of them faced the same way. I took the pump to another chain or two – same problem.
Running out of options, I called my “fix anything” old cowboy buddy. He came over with a flaring kit so we could cut the flare nut off the fuel line and come up with a solution. After multiple trips to multiple parts stores, we ended up at the local hot rod shop, where we combed through their selection of high-pressure machined brass fuel system fittings – like, Weiand supercharger shit, just to feed the two-barrel carb on a Dodge 318. We cobbled together a half-dozen 90s and barbs until we finally had something that would point the gas at the hole it was supposed to go into.
As I said, I first jacked up the van around nine in the morning. By the time I dropped it again to fire it up and test drive it, I had to use the headlights.
Honorable mention: the water pump on my 2005 Trailblazer. I got a quote from a reputable garage for something like $900. I was incredulous. Yeah, I’m sorry, said the shop owner (who my family patronized for decades, and trusted), there’s just that much labor in doing one in that truck. It it were a Tahoe or something, it wouldn’t be near that much.
So I did some research. It turns out that Chevy, in their wisdom and foresight, put the front end together in such a way that the filler neck of the radiator blocks the fan shroud from lifting out. To remove the water pump, by the book, damn near the entire front end has to come off just to get the stupid fan shroud out – headlight buckets, grille, radiator support, like, a LOT of stuff.
So I consulted YouTube. I must have seen a dozen different shadetree mechanics who said, “Damn that. What you’re gonna do is, you’re gonna take a compact hacksaw (the kind with just a hand grip and a blade, more like a knife) and cut a notch out of the shroud and throw it away. Then it’ll come right out, and it won’t be in the way when you do the next water pump on it.” Which is exactly what I did. Even after buying the saw – for what, five bucks? – I saved something like $700 off the quote, minus pain and suffering for the nastiest smashed thumb I’d given myself in a minute. But it didn’t hurt more than spending 700 more dollars.
I humbly offer 2 of my worst.
Heater core was almost a dash out job. Car had AC…had rear heater vents in the console. Passenger seat out. Everything bolted or screwed together. No snap clips like modern cars. Never should have sold it. But was moving to Oregon for work…Only could take one car..70 Ford Torino…Sold the Riv and a 72 Buick Electra 225. Those were the days.
Sunbeam Tiger! 63 Riviera! SWEET!
Replacing the windshield wiper fluid level sensor on my 350z. 40 minutes of desperately fishing it out of the reservoir.
This is how good people are turned into villians.
Related, though not tedious so much as hilarious. I replaced the hoses and windshield fluid sprayers in my R107 fairly quickly. It took a good 20 min of 1) overshooting the windshield entirely 2) getting sprayed in the face 3) washing the inside of the car with wiper fluid to get the spray heads at the right angle.
I mean if you have glasses being sprayed in the face with wiper fluid might be useful heh
This is the kind of repair job that would make me stop halfway through and say to myself, “Wait a minute – why do I need this damn thing in the first place? If I pull on the washer sprayer and nothing comes out, then I know I need more fluid.”
It seems like a good half of the sensor functions of a modern automobile can easily be accomplished with nothing more than eyeballs, the way they were for decades and decades.
I agree, it’s not necessary to have a sensor for something as simple as wiper fluid. The only reason I did it is because the stupid washer fluid light being on all the time bugged me. I was also taking the bumper off for a different reason so I thought I might as well tackle the sensor.
Ah, yes, the eight words that preface ultimate frustration: “Welp, while I’m in there, might as well…”
I think the job-for-two aspect hits home for me: so many times I’ve need to be above and beside the engine bay at the same time as being below and aligned with it. One of the most dumbly frustrating jobs in this fashion was an alternator, where I couldn’t load the tensioner *and* slide the bolts home at the same time. The swearing was even worse because I knew it wasn’t hard to do conceptually, I just couldn’t be two places at once.
I bet Stef will back me up, but pretty much any repair on older Porsches. To even get to anything, much less to fix or replace it, often takes a huge amount of time, patience, and thinking things through before you even start in earnest.
Thanks to this place, I now know the newer ones are much more home mechanic-friendly, but on mine, it often seems like everything is either completely covered/blocked by something else or requires some extremely specific, single repair tool that’s not even available on the commercial market.
I’m a thin guy, and working on mine is the one time I’m actually glad for that; if I had manly arms, there’d be physically no way for me to get into some of the spaces to even access things. It still took me hours to remove/replace a simple worn out engine hatch damper prop, as snaking my arm into the back of the compartment to release the old one (and then attach the new one) was maddening.
Those are some scary looking ramps made even more scary by the fact that you aren’t centered on them.
That was where my attention was drawn, did some research, they are “display ramps” $550.00 pair!
That is insane, but at least they aren’t home built out of exhaust tubing which is what they look like.
Some wheel chocks in front of the front tires would’ve been nice.
Tedious? Replace the spokes on wire wheels and the we can discuss tedious!
Ahh yes, such fun. I related the wheels on my 73 Triumph Trident 750. That bike was fine to ride a nightmare to work on.
Relaced not related.
Changing the clutch on our old Pinto. The job itself wasn’t really that hard but a lack of experience (I was 14 or so) coupled with a bad set of tools and a terrible Hayes manual resulted in all the gear oil dumping out the prop shaft and onto my head. That’s when I found out two things:
1) Gear oil does not wash out well.
2) Gear oil smells like dead whale. Because it is (was) made in part from dead whales.
Good times!
I am not sure I consider any single job tedious, just a series of challenges.
To me, it is tedious when you repeat the same job over and over again.
I was part of an update/customer satisfaction campaign for PSI engines that resulted in me doing about 35 timing belts in identical machines over the course of a couple of months. It was about 2 hours per job, booked 4.5, and doing one day was advantageous for us billing-wise.
For quite a while, every afternoon, I went to the same customer and did the same job on the same machine EVERY. SINGLE.DAY.
Yes, this. The *first* time you change the HVAC blower motor in a Volvo 240, it is a confounding but interesting challenge. The second time is a struggle to remember what you did the first time. But by the time you’re on your third blower motor job, it is pure tedium.
Twice was enough for me.
There was a time, around the year 2000, when people who were driving 240s worth $1000 would find out that the blower motor job cost $800 and would sell me their car for $100-$200. For a $50 blower motor and 4 hours of my time, I could flip those cars for $1200 all day long. People in the know would pay extra for a used 240 when they knew it had a new blower motor in it.
I think the most tedious project I ever did was reassembling (then troubleshooting) an overhead cam boxer Subaru engine. I bought an XT from a kid who had tried to change the timing belts, failed, then left it in pieces for several years. I had no experience with them: only the OHV engines—and I’d never been deeper than changing a valve cover gasket.
Once assembled, I still couldn’t get spark. Thankfully, the deal included a running (but rolled) parts car, so I kept swapping sensors and other crap I can’t now remember until that magical night* I finally saw the beautiful blue spark through the crack with the hood raised. It finally ran! But horribly: the lifters had bled down. I parked it in the middle of the backyard so it wouldn’t burn the house down, and left it running to either heal or destruct. They pumped up, and it went on to take incredible abuse for several more years
*worked nights, so wrenched from 11ish to 3 or so. Glad I had a bartender for a neighbor.
The most annoying ones are the ones where there’s not enough room for a bolt to come out. My Escort ZX2 was the worst about this. Several things involved having to raise or lower the engine just to access, but I think the most irritating one was the power steering pump. I’ve probably complained about it before on here.
The pump was mounted right near the top of the engine so it gave the false impression that it would be easy to remove. But what I didn’t realize was that one of the mounting bolts was blocked by the high pressure hose that attached to the underside of the pump. There was about 4 inches of space between that and the radiator so the solution ended up being a stubby wrench and a 4 foot pry bar for leverage.
Honorable mention goes to the driver side axle on a first gen Ford Focus. Not hard to get to but takes way too much force to pop out of the transmission.
Ouch. Reminded me of the PS pump in a Lexus es300: it was mounted behind the transverse V6. Much fumbling, pain, and cussing.
When I was trying to decide what used minivan I wanted it was between a Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna. I took one look at how the 3MZ was crammed in there, said fuck that and chose the Odyssey.
Between working on that es, and replacing the distributor in a V6 Stratus, I have never owned a transverse V6. In fact, I quit side-wrenching on them after replacing a water pump in a particularly neglected minivan belonging to a friend’s daughter.
But I still own a Subaru boxer, so that particular personal ethic isn’t exactly consistent 😉
Transverse engines really burn me up. My 4 banger is easy looking at it, but hard to do certain jobs. Toyota can do better.
I miss RWD so much.
89 Honda Civic SI. It didn’t have power steering, but the alternator was mounted near the bottom of the engine. It was easy to unmount the alternator, like most everything on that car, but… had to remove the driver’s side half shaft to get it out from under the car.
> the solution ended up being a stubby wrench and a 4 foot pry bar for leverage
Sounds like you really don’t want the pry bar to slip 😮